


Sunlight

by eye_of_a_cat



Category: Babylon 5
Genre: Alien Culture, Alien Rituals, Episode s05e02 The Very Long Night of Londo Mollari, F/M, Minbari
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-29
Updated: 2018-05-29
Packaged: 2019-05-15 01:59:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,213
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14781462
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eye_of_a_cat/pseuds/eye_of_a_cat
Summary: He thought it would be a relief to leave. Instead, it feels like being saved from drowning only to discover he can no longer breathe air.





	Sunlight

**Author's Note:**

> Takes place during the S5 episode 'The Very Long Night of Londo Mollari'. Originally posted on LiveJournal in 2004.

The first time he learned that it was forbidden to look directly at one of the Nine, he had not long since been scolded for staring into the sun. _You will blind yourself,_ his teacher had warned him, and he believed it enough to think meeting the eyes of a Satai would do the same. He is older now, and much has changed, but the memory of this remains.  
  
Sometimes she speaks to him gently, her voice balanced between chiding and praise, her hands framing his face. "You are a good aide," she says. "I am proud of you." And her voice is suddenly very close and very far away all at once, and her fingertips are warm against his skin, and he smiles without smiling and finds a way to look down.  
  
Sometimes she looks at him without seeing a Minbari, fallen too far now to stand with her as she fulfils her prophecies. She calls him to meetings where their language is not spoken, and she holds out one hand wordlessly for his notes on alien worlds, alien strategy, alien thought. If he forgets something, as he still does, he sees surprise closer to disbelief in her eyes before she touches his arm and says it does not matter.  
  
Sometimes she calls him her friend, when they sit together for the ninth day's rituals. She teases him for his clan's strange traditions, and laughs when he says of course, she is very wise, it is a great honour to share her ways, and then changes nothing. When she places her hand over his, candle-light dances in the silk of her sleeves.  
  
He has measured out his life, or all of it that matters, in moments like these. It is as difficult to imagine they will end as it is to think of her without him. But he has broken his vows, and he is leaving, and after a time she too will see this way is best. When he told her, she reached out to touch him; he backed away, and for a moment, she understood.  
  
They will send his replacement soon. He imagines someone young, as he was, who will not dare to look at her. When the thought presses against wounds still raw, he continues regardless, picturing her smile as she bows in greeting. He wonders if they will speak of him at all, if his replacement will know enough to ask. He wonders if it will feel the same when she reaches for his hand. He wants to take this young, foolish boy and smash his face into the wall.  
  
This thought does not trouble him, not much. All the things he wants are wrong, and he has had time enough to grow used to the sick, metal taste in his mouth when he allows himself to think any of them. It is not so bad to be reminded of this, sometimes; it is better than ignoring them and letting himself believe he is better than he is. It only troubles him that such thoughts can be so bright, so real, and sometimes it seems as if Delenn is truly there beside him, her back arched as she pulls him close.  
  
He thought it would be a relief to leave. Instead, it feels like being saved from drowning only to discover he can no longer breathe air.  
  
When the door-chime sounds, he does not hear it as anything more than an interruption, a reminder that he has work to do. He opens his eyes to see his quarters almost bare, his possessions all packed. There are not many. Delenn once told him that he should have more; this place did not seem like his home, she said, frowning as her gaze flicked between bare walls. She does not understand how it is possible to belong to the sharp angles of shadows that empty shelves cast, how each smooth line can feel like a sanctuary.  
  
The chime sounds again. He pulls himself to his feet, smoothes down his clothes, and tries to hope it will not be her.  
  
"Lennier." She bows low in greeting, the incline of her head too steep for him to see her face, and he freezes between finding words to tell her how inappropriate this is and stumbling away. It is not until the muscles in his neck tense with the force of custom, pulling his own head down, that he realises he has not moved at all. When he looks up, she is herself again.  
  
"I'm sorry," he manages, wrestling his voice into quiet calmness. "I was..." He looks back at the boxes stacked neatly and fastened shut, no cause for distraction. "I was not paying attention."  
  
"I was beginning to think you had already left." She is smiling as she follows him inside. "I came to offer my help, but it seems you no longer require it."  
  
"There is little left to do."  
  
"So I see." Her fingers brush the smooth, empty surfaces. Lately he has tried not to notice such things, but four years of watching her is too much to forget. He can tell by the set of her shoulders that she has not finished speaking. "We have time to talk," she says.  
  
He nods. This can be endured, for one hour longer in her presence. Many things can.  
  
She begins awkwardly, cutting off words between syllables and slicing them into pieces of meaningless sound. This, too, is unlike her. He remembers the chrysalis, and how she grasped his hands on the day he found her cold and shaking beneath a cloak, asking him "What am I?" over and over again until the words blurred into nothing. "This is no use," she says eventually. "I did not come to ask you about travelling. I came to see if it was still the calling of your heart to go."  
  
"Yes." His voice is quieter than he thought it would be.  
  
"Yes," she echoes. "Then the calling of your heart was never to stay at my side."  
  
He swallows, bites down hard on the impulse to respond immediately. "You are mistaken," he says. "My calling has always been to serve you."  
  
But she is shaking her head, and his explanations go unstated. "That was unfair of me." When she takes a step towards him, even the air seems to tense. "I could have arranged some time away for you, if I had known. Maybe a position in one of our embassies. You could have returned home for a while, I -"  
  
"It wouldn't make a difference." He mumbles the words to the ground.  
  
Her hand, halfway to his face, falls away. "No. I suppose not."  
  
Standing before her has never been so difficult. Seconds stretch out into eternities, and her disappointment is a heavy, cloaking fog surrounding him. He swallows. "Is there any more news about Londo?"  
  
"No. No more." She bites at her lip, distracted. "Doctor Franklin thinks he might live, still. I do not know whether we should hope for it."  
  
"All life -"  
  
"Is sacred, of course, and it would be a terrible thing if he died without finding peace. But peace is not always there to find. If he no longer wishes to search for it, I could not condemn him."  
  
He would have disagreed with this easily, once. Now it is more persuasive; it speaks to him in Marcus's voice, and reminds him that peace can seem so far away, so very far away. "No," he says. "There is hope in everything, if we allow ourselves to see it."  
  
A tired smile. "I don't think you believe that, Lennier."  
  
For a moment he thinks she means Marcus, whose death she does not think he had any part in. Then he realises, and there is no strength left in his body, and he sits down with hs back against a crate and four years of exhaustion pressing him into the ground. _She will know,_ he thinks in quiet desperation, but she knows already.  
  
He does not dare look as she kneels by his side. He does his best to ignore the hand on his shoulder, the warm breath on his neck, the sorrow in her voice. "Oh, Lennier."  
  
 _Go,_ he wants to say. _If you need to think well of me, go._ It is no use, it is too heavy, he cannot even lift his head under so much weight, and "Please" is all he manages. He has never asked her for anything before.  
  
"You have not been listening to me, my friend." Her hand brushes the edge of his collar. She must think it reassuring. "There is nothing to feel ashamed of."  
  
If he could, he would twist away, he would not look at her. If he could, he would not need to answer. "It - it is terrible to want -" The words choke him too late for silence.  
  
When she kisses him, it does not burn. It feels like the first time he tasted sha'neyat, so heady and strong and real that everything else faded into insignificance, and there is nothing else to want. She is smiling as she tells him, see, no-one came to drag you away in chains, and although she is wrong and some punishment must surely follow, he does not care, he will welcome it. He wants to laugh until she laughs with him, to kiss her hands and lose himself in all the sounds of her voice. He does not back away when she reaches for him again, and her hand comes to rest, lightly, on his cheek. "Now," she says. "Tell me. If something is not terrible in itself, then how can wanting it be worse?" And he does not answer.  
  
She is gentler than he imagined. She touches him in circles, stills him with murmured reassurance when his muscles knot tight beneath her hands. She doesn't let him reach for her, not at first; she catches his hand to turn his one awkward attempt into a smooth movement away. Her hands begin to leave trails of fire on his skin, and all the plain and wordly things in his quarters become clear and bright and beautiful, and what is happening now is all that matters.  
  
He does not know how much time passes before she holds him still, her hands on his shoulders. "Tell me what you want," she says.  
  
He cannot speak at first, but silence has no more place here than doubt. "To be yours. To be one with you."  
  
"Then never think I no longer need you," she says, and before he can tell her that he never thought that, not truly, she brings his hands to skin that is so warm beneath them and his other thoughts are lost. When he echoes her own questions - _like this? softer?_ \- she guides him, and when he grips her hand so tightly in his own that her breath hisses in pain, she stops his apologies by pulling him so close that he is part of her, feeling her own pleasure burning like tongues of flame through his body as she cries out, and it is not so bad, after all, it is not so bad to burn.  
  
"You will come back," she says, when they are once again capable of words. His body feels strange, light as air and yet too heavy to move; he is glad of her head resting on his shoulder, anchoring him still. "And you will tell me what you have learned, and what Tuzanor looks like in the summer."  
  
He says that he will, as he always knew. He will come back whenever there is time, and tell her of ancient buildings and sunlight dappled through trees and of how much brighter the stars look when the dawn is never far away.   
  
"Then sleep," she says. "I will watch you, once."  
  
Sleep is closer than he thought. When he closes his eyes, it welcomes him.  
  


~*~

  
She wakes him with a light touch on his cheek, and he struggles into a sit, his neck aching where he lay. "What did you see?" he mumbles. It is difficult to speak, and the words themselves seem heavy.  
  
She smiles. "At first, I thought you were not sleeping at all. I saw your devotion and your belief, but I have seen these things in you when you were awake. Then you seemed troubled, and so tired, and I thought this was new until I remembered how distracted you have seemed lately. All I could see was my friend, the way I have always seen you."  
  
"Then you - you saw nothing?" Something close to panic digs iron claws into his chest.  
  
"No, Lennier." She holds him close again, for a moment, pressing her face into his neck. "Your devotion, your courage, everything I saw, this is your true face. You have never tried to hide it."  
  
He realises that he is shaking, that even his voice has begun to tremble. "Was there nothing else?"  
  
"No. Nothing else." She frowns. "Why do you look so afraid?"  
  
He does not try to answer. He gets to his feet, and wishes her well, and finds his schedule for the morning. He is leaving in a few hours. In Tuzanor, the sun is beginning to rise.


End file.
